"But what heart could be so hard as not to be pierced with piteous feeling to see that company? For some kept their heads low and their faces bathed with tears, looking one upon another; others stood groaning very dolorously, looking up to the height of heaven, fixing their eyes upon it, crying out loudly as if asking help of the Father of Nature; others struck their faces with the palms of their hands, throwing themselves at full length upon the ground; others made their lamentations in the manner of a dirge, after the custom of their country. And to increase their sufferings still more, there arrived those who had charge of the division of the captives, and who began to separate one from another, in order to make an equal partition of the fifths."

Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, c.1453. Zurara was the royal chronicler of Portugal. This passage describes the distribution of enslaved Africans at Lagos, Portugal, in 1444 — the first large-scale slave auction on European soil.